Sunday, March 10, 2013

Women, SC/ST reservation seen narrowly

The reservation for women
and SC/ST is always seen narrowly and this Urban Local Body (ULB)
election is no exception. Apart from reserved wards, none of the
political parties have provided promising number of tickets for women
and SC/ST in general wards.

Congress has provided two
tickets for schedule castes and one for women in general
constituency. Dr Savitha is contesting from ward number 6, whereas
Siddaraju and Badal Nanjundaswamy who belong to SC are contesting
from ward number 17 and 20 respectively. While, BJP has provided
ticket for one women candidate Latha Mohan (ward number 58), and
JD(S) has given one ticket for SC candidate (Suresh) from Ward No 17.

When contacted some of the
political leaders to ask about women reservation, the answer was
strange. Many of them think giving 33 per cent reservation to women
is more than the required. The major political parties think that the
chances of women winning against male candidates are less. While some
men do want to give up the equal opportunity for the women and are
not ready to share their power.

Some think women wont be
equal contender to men in political line and have the mindset that
women will be losing candidate. There are even instances where some
males were scared of sharing power with women.

Sociologist Prof Indira
says: “political power is in the hands of men from several decades
and majority of them want to enjoy as long as possible. Moreover
corruption has become part of politics. Hence, they are not ready to
accept the principle of providing the reservation for women in
general wards as they do want to redistribute their power. Even we
can see in America so far a women has not been provided an
opportunity to become President. This is nothing but 'Tokenism'. A
lot of things have to change for the woman to really exercise her
power."

Dalit Leader Purushotham
said as elections were suddenly announced he could not look into the
issue. “I will definitely fight for schedule caste rights and
ensure from next election schedule caste people get ticket in general
constituency.”

Statistics

Congress : 65 wards – 22
women

JD(S)
: 64 wards – 22 women

BJP : 64 wards - 21 women

KJP : 60 wards – 20
women

BSR Congress : 40 wards –
12 women

Independent Candidates:
210 – 40 women

In all, 433 candidates are
contesting in election in which 137 are women.